U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, visiting Asia on her first foreign tour in her new post, will discuss climate change and the possibility of collaborating on clean energy with China.

Clinton said last week that clean energy offered a way to strengthen American ties with China, and announced plans to visit a “clean” thermal plant in Beijing, built with U.S. and Chinese technology.

Clinton discussed her ideas of a climate change partnership with China on Friday at the Asia Society in New York. Asia Society experts, in cooperation with the Pew Centre for Climate Change, have produced a report outlining just such a partnership.

Beijing has also expressed interest in cooperation. At a Brookings Institution forum last week, the Chinese ambassador to the United States, Zhou Wenzhong, said China and America, working together, could set the stage for progress at the climate change meeting in Copenhagen in December.

Together, China and the U.S. account for over 40% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.